Oxholm’s West Indies maps and drawings: St. Croix, Frederiksted

One of the best collections of maps and drawings from the Danish West Indies was made by the officer Peter Lotharius Oxholm in the years 1778-1780. The collection contains 32 maps and drawings, including 8 maps of Frederiksted on St. Croix.

The town of Frederiksted with surrounding plantations on the west end of St. Croix. Construction of the small town was begun in the 1750s, and one notices the orderly town plan with entirely equal street sequence. The letter “B” marks Fort Frederiksværn on the beach directly north of the town itself. Both north and south of the town, there were marshy lagoons with still and unhealthy brackish water. The town had no harbor but only an open anchorage (roadstead), where the ships had to lie exposed to wind and weather. (Danish National Archives, Rentekammersamlingen, no. 337.317a).Other than the churches, the most important buildings in Frederiksted were Fort Frederiksværn – which Oxholm called Friderichs Fort – and the neighboring building, the customs house, and the hospital on the hill on the outskirts of the town. Even though the town was not – and is not – especially large, it housed no fewer than four churches: the Danish (Lutheran), the Moravian Brethren’s, the Roman Catholic and the Anglican. The street names were as in other Danish towns Torvegade (Market Street), Bjergegade (Hill Street), Kongens Tværgade (King Cross Street) and Fiskergade (Fisher Street). The town had constant problems with obtaining clean water, so all water had to be collected with the aid of so-called regnbakker (rainwater catchments) and kept in cisterns. (Danish National Archives, Rentekammersamlingen, no. 337.317b).Ground plan of the ground floor in the fort with coastal battery in front. Fort Frederiksværn stood ready in 1760. Most of the rooms around the inner yard were used for living quarters for officers and non-commissioned officers. The enlisted men were quartered together in the dark and stuffy rooms in the bastions. There was also a guardroom, powder room and kitchens. Rainwater was collected from the roofs with the aid of rainwater catchments, from which the water was piped for storage in large cisterns. (Danish National Archives, Rentekammersamlingen, no. 337.318).The drawing shows the many cannons which Fort Frederiksværn was equipped with. These involved smaller cannons at the fort itself for close defense, among other things in case of slave rebellions. The coastal battery with front toward the sea was furnished with heavier guns. In Oxholm’s time the cannons were in relatively poor condition, however, and neither powder nor balls were on hand in large quantities. For the largest cannons, there was only a total of ten cannonballs altogether. There were 128 serviceable handguns in the armory. (Danish National Archives, Rentekammersamlingen, no. 337.320).Fort Frederiksværn had been intended to be manned with a company of seventy-five men, but in Oxholm’s time there were only forty-two plus the officers. In the event of problems, the militia and the townsmen could be alerted by firing two cannon shots from the fort. However, one problem was that there were no trained artillerymen, only people who could fire salutes with loose powder on special occasions. Moreover, the fort’s buildings were in poor condition with rotting beams and crumbling walls. In contrast to drawing 337.318, however, a separate victualing yard had now been constructed and a deep rainwater catchment had been installed for water collection inside the fort yard. (Danish National Archives, Rentekammersamlingen, no. 337.322).Several of Oxholm’s drawings show proposals for new buildings that were never constructed. This applies, for example, to the victualing storehouse (at top) and the battery (at bottom) here. The solid victualing storehouse was intended to be constructed with two floors and built together with Fort Frederiksværn, almost as an extension along Kongensgade (King Street). The building would contain, among other things, a large baking oven, a rainwater cistern and quarters on the second floor. The battery on the point at Sprat Hall slightly more than three kilometers north of the town would be furnished with powerful cannons and heavy mortars, so that the anchorage (roadstead) off Frederiksted could be controlled. (Danish National Archives, Rentekammersamlingen, no. 337.323).The building seemed fine at first. But it was in quite poor condition, and for instance it rained through the roof. The offices for the customs inspector, weighmaster and visitors were on the ground floor, and the weighing house was behind the large gate in the middle of the facade. The kitchens and sheds for the king’s warehouse slaves were in the yard. On the second floor were a pair of official residences, but the height of the ceiling was only seven feet (a bit over two meters), so they were stuffy and terribly hot during the daytime. (Danish National Archives, Rentekammersamlingen, no. 337.325)At top is seen the military hospital in Frederiksted as it appeared when Oxholm arrived. As it was in part rotted and collapsed and in part laid out inappropriately, Oxholm proposed that it simply be torn down and a new hospital constructed according to the plans shown at bottom. One of this proposals was to arrange something as modern as “a room in which the convalescing can exercise without having the other sick persons’ nasty exhalations around them,” as he writes. The expenses for construction of the new hospital were estimated at 18,430 rigsdaler. (Danish National Archives, Rentekammersamlingen, no. 337.326).